It's that time of the year again. A certain festive anticipation takes hold of me.
Mr. Sun decides to illuminate certain corners with his geometrical rays. Love that fragrance of a season in transition. A season of festivals.
The festive season propels me towards adding that little extra which transforms the home and gets you ready for new events, happy changes and cheerful living!
As promised, sharing few joyful corners of our home...
Jai Hanuman!
Allamanda flower on his open palm...
My shiny silk cushion covers in bright colours & borders...
Mangalgiri borders give a traditional look...
Some tealights in a glazed glass holders...
Fresh fresh flowers in my copper tea kettle...
Bedside chest with a tower of books and flowers...
A Panjurli (Boar Mask) from Udupi...
Roses on my dressing table, kept in little bowls of water placed inside woven palm leaf basket...
Hope all of you enjoyed a virtual tour of few corners of our home.
Eid Mubarak & Happy Ganesh Chaturthi to all my readers! Have a great week!
I'm not sure where I first saw Pete the catbeing reviewed,but I came across him more than once. I ummed and ahhed but didn't buy the bright yellow book (my photo does not do it justice). Then Zoe from Playing by the book, wrote about Pete the cat on her blog. I followed the linksto the creators telling their story to a group of pre-schoolers and I was hooked.Pete the cat: I love my white shoes was waiting for me in my pile of holiday post when I got back! I've been humming his song ever since! I've also been watching Youtubefilms of children retelling the story. I am well geared to sharing it with the first pre-school group I can get my hands on! There is nothing better than real children interacting with a picturebook to convince me that a picturebook will work.
So, Pete the cat: I love my white shoes is written by Eric Litwin and illustrated by James Dean. A dark blue cat in bright white sneakers. He is a cool dude.
End papers
The endpapers show us Pete staring up at four pairs of sneakers, no white pairs there, maybe that's because he's wearing them? Here's Pete walking down the road...
Title page
And so that's how we start, walking down the street...
Opening 1
That great big foot striding on, it's almost as though Pete is going to step on the reader! And watch that yellow bird, she gradually gets more involved with Pete's story. "Pete the cat was walking down the street in his brand-new white shoes. Pete loved his white shoes so much, he sang this song:"
Opening 2
"I love my white shoes, I love my white shoes, I love my white shoes." I can't say this without bursting into song, which is from watching the Youtube film and hearing the Harpercollins song download, and Pete's very cool dude stance is all the funnier for knowing the wacky tune. The rebus-like message in his speech bubble will attract the children's attention and so will the way the word for "white" has been highlighted in the recto page.
Opening 3
But wait, "Oh no! Pete stepped in a large pile of ... strawberries! What colour did it turn his shoes?" How he could have missed that VERY large pile of red fruit is beyond me, but he looks great right on the top of that pile of strawberries! And of course we all know the answer to the question, don't we?
Opening 4
You got it! RED! And there's one red shoe and lots of red all over the place. "Did Pete cry? Goodness, no! He kept walking along singing his song." Can you remember how the song goes?
Opening 5
And so it continues. Pete steps in a pile of blueberries, even bigger than the strawberry pile. In fact there are two piles now, one for Pete and one for the yellow bird. What colour did they turn his shoes? BLUE! There are two blue shoes in this illustration. (Many of us adults will wonder at this trasformation into plain old blue, for when blue and red come together we normaly get purple. But hey! No problem, it's all part of Pete's wild walk. And "Did Pete cry? Goodness, no! He kept walking along and singing his song." You may have noticed that Pete says "Everything is cool" in opening 4, and he has something different to say on each of these spreads... his blue shoes are "Awesome!" We see Pete sharing his umbrella with the yellow bird as he sings his song, lots of blue rain cascading around them.
You'll have picked up the visual rhythm and structure for sure, and it's repeated with brown, as Pete steps into a muddy puddle. Brown shoes, we see three brown feet and Pete is fine about it all, in fact he even thinks it's "Groovy!" He sings his song and drinks some coffee, which is also brown. But then he steps in a bucket of water... "and all the brown, and all the blue and all the red were washed away". The bird looks very worried!
Opening 12
Oh dear, what colour are his shoes now? You guessed it! WHITE! But now they are WET!" And we see four white sneakers again. "Rock and roll!" says Pete, and he sings his song ...
Opening 14
"I love my wet shoes, I love my wet shoes, I love my wet shoes." There's no stopping Pete! And... "the moral of this story is: No matter what you step in, keep walking along and singing your song ..."
Bach verso
"... because it's all good."
What a moral! Good for you Pete, a great way to help children to take it easy and look on the bright side of life. Love it!
"AGAIN!" The children call out... you'll be so tired of telling, and retelling this picturebook, I guarantee!
Watch the YouTube film and see just how much fun the storyteller and the kids are having. Watch and take notes, and use some of the ideas for your own storytelling techniques. Really, the pauses, the sound effects and the gestures are all excellent ways to get your students, and you, super motivated and enjoying the experience.
HarperCollins have a collection of printables for some of their books, and there's one forPete the cat. If you want to see their other printables clickhere.
And if you haven't already, check out the link to Zoe's blog, where she shares the fun coloured playdough she made with her two girls, following on from the idea of fruit dyes. A great followup activity.
As you take the road out of town from Cordova the mountains break apart and the flat lands of the Copper River Delta open up while you cross bridge after bridge. The Chugach Mountains are still visible to the north, bearing forth a procession of huge glaciers pouring out of them. The rivers emerging from the ice pass under the road in braided streams, often with wide sandy shores that tempt access to the ice miles away. A number of unmarked gravel roads of varying quality branch of from the main road.
The vast landscape of Sheridan Glacier
I did know of one road that appeared to go all the way to the mountains, based on what i saw on a map. The road was unmarked though, and i chose incorrectly on my first two attempts. The third day we were there i finally hit it, and after several miles through forest the road ends in a mossy clearing, right next to Sheridan Glacier. From the lot you can go straight to the glacier, or take a trail up the mountain next to it.
There were some cool bright rusty rocks in this shallow blue pool.
What looks like a pond is actually a deep crevasse. The rocks that look like they are "floating" on the far right are actually resting on an invisible glass ledge.
The Sheridan Glacier is perhaps the only glacier i've been to so far where you can step directly off of grass and onto the ice. The trail to the glacier follows along a large old moraine, and at this time the glacier is ramming right into it. To the west of the moraine is a growing melt pool that has flooded over the trail and drowned some trees. To the east the trail follows the shore of the main melt pool, which is large and interesting enough for some kayak exploring.
After the rain and wind stopped the water in the extensive meltpool area revealed some seriously surreal, abstract imagery.
I had forgotten crampons or an axe on our trip, but the ice was textured and flat, and we were able to walk a long distance with just regular shoes, until Maree was too uncomfortable. I dropped Maree off back on shore and went out to get some pictures. The weather conditions were just too interesting to leave. A cloudy day with a bit of rain here and there, but virtually no wind, and generally warm temperatures (for a glacier).
This is part of the toe (front) of the glacier. It had a lot of arches, bridges and tunnels, with different colored water from spot to spot.
An iceberg floating by like a spaceship.
This pool looked like frozen waves on rough seas.
The overcast skies provided us with another benefit. We saw iceworms! I never thought i'd see one, they are apparently very rare, especially in the daytime. First we just saw one, it was featureless and black, impossibly living in the ice of the glacier. It looked like something that would crawl out of someones eyeball in the X-files. After a few dozen yards the ice was covered with so many of them we had to watch our steps. I picked one up on my finger. It appeared to writhe in pain so i put it back on the ice. I imagine my finger may have felt like a hot iron to a creature that lives in ice.
The weather turned nice 15 miles up the glacier.
These serracs were miles away. They must have been enormous. The background is foggy here, but in the previous pictures the seracs are located at the bottom of the right hand slope in front of the distant triangular mountain.
Maree wouldn't get any closer to the crevasse.
Just underneath the white surface the ice turns blue, like at the bottom of all these little holes.
An Iceworm!
This is how big they are. On my finger i could barely feel it. Visibly it was freaking out, so i put it back down right away.
We passed through an area of 1,000 square feet where the iceworms were everywhere. It starts to look kind of gross. Makes me think twice about drinking glacier water.
Maree crosses a large dirty area on the way back. It's easy to get lost in the size of these places.
Part II: The Nameless Creek
After several hours on the ice we returned to the car. The area was just so nice that i decided to walk up the forest trail for a while until it got difficult. There was a perfect stream in the woods that emerged from a small moss covered canyon, causing the trail to take another route. That stream had all the aspects of a perfect photo, from what i could see, it just didn't have the elements in the right place. Looking up stream as the forest walls narrowed was very intriguing, so i went back to the truck, put on my hip waders, got my tripod, and jumped right in.
For a while a faint trail wound through the forest. Looked like the moss was trying to devour the trees.
Moss covered cliffs and debris. There was so much moss around, i got the feeling that if you fell asleep on the ground you might wake up covered in the stuff.
Time to jump in!
Wading up the ice cold stream was one of the most fun unexpected little hikes that i've had in a long time. I entered the canyon, navigated several tricky deep spots, and after using my dormant Tai Chi skills to slow motion climb up through a threatening waterfall and over a rock dam i made it to the center of the gorge. It was a perfect spot.
In the grotto i had momentarily found the perfect stream.
I couldn't go past this point. I thought i would make a picture here, and i tried to move that narrow log since it ruined the image. That thing was amazingly wedged onto the rocks in three separate places. It wouldn't even hint at budging. Next time there's a flood it's going to be smashed by another one.
We're going on a bear huntis a classic, one my own children grew up with, as it was first published in paperback in the early 90's. It's also a picturebook I use over and over in my pre-school English classes. It's been recommended by Caroline Swettenham, an English teacher from the British Council in Italy. A great recommendation!
We're going on a bear hunt is a traditional campfire chant, and has been adapted and rewritten by the magical Michael Rosen; The illustrations are by Helen Oxenbury, wonderful illustrations alternating between spreads of watercolour and black and white sketches. Helen Oxenbury doesn't have a web site, but there's a nice little film on www.guardian.co.uk, which gives you a taste of her work, and shows you what she looks and sounds like. She's a wonderful watercolourist and looking closely at her illustrations again for this post has been a delight. I'm learning how to use watercolour and so I appreciate her skill, I've got a long way to go! I love her water and grass ...
So, the picturebook. The front cover shows us four of the six protagonists, a father figure and three children. There's an older girl (or possibly the mother?) and a black and white boarder collie on the back cover. The covers create a whole image and it's the same as the title page illustration. The characters are joyfully leading us into the picturebook, skipping and smiling, off we go.
Front endpapers
My paperback edition, now nearly 20 years old, is battered and the corners are worn but it has the endpapers, and they are really very special. The front and back ones are different, depicting a passing of time. The front endpapers show a sandy beach, with rocks and seagulls and the sea and sky meeting in a hazy horizon. This illustration has always puzzled me, as the sea itself does not feature in the story, except very briefly across the muddy flats that the family have to cross as they look for their bear. Intriguing!
Copyright and title page
Here are those front and back cover characters, they are skipping along, eager to find their bear. The illustrations that follow come in pairs, first a black and white illustration, then a colour one. The first presents the physical problem, the second shows how it is overcome.
Opening 1
The first black and white spread, begins the alternating sequence. These sketches are completely delicious, so enjoy them as you read the rhythmic words: take in those careful outlines, contours and smudges. I love the way the dog is almost lost in the grass. The rhyming text is repeated through out the book and goes like this:
"We're going on a bear hunt.
We're going to catch a big one.
What a beautiful day!
We're not scared.
Uh-uh! Grass!
Long wavy grass.
We can't go over it.
We can't go under it.
Oh no!
We've got to go through it! "
Opening 2
And turn the page to bright colour and a sumptuously grassy hill. What fun they are having! The text is two onomatopoeic words representing the grass as we move through it. "Swishy swashy!"
The next geographical hurdle is a river, possibly an estuary if we are near the sea. The characters are studying the water, we see their backs only, but it's clear they are contemplating what to do. Same rhyming text ...
Opening 3
Opening 4
And "Splash splosh!" as they go through the water.
So you've seen the grass and the water I like so much! Pretty brilliant don't you think?
The family keep going through mud, "Squelch squerch!"; through a forest, "Stumble trip!"; through a snowstorm, "Hoooo woooo!" and then they find a cave.
Opening 11
The dog looks a bit worried and the baby definitely doesn't want to go in. But they do ...
Opening 12
Brilliantly visual emotions shown here: this family is frightened. The font on the text on recto gets bigger, and kids love to chorus loudly, "WHAT'S THAT?" Gulp ...
Opening 13
The words are on the verso, and we read them first, but we've already seen the illustration, we know it's a bear and the suspense as we describe his nose, his ears and his eyes, makes the discovery even more exciting and we can all chorus together ... "IT'S A BEAR!!!!"
And then the previous pages are re-traced, in rapid succession, the bear is seen following the family as they race home, super quickly.
Opening 14
And we have to say it all very quickly too, out of breath and panting as we get to the swishy swashy grass, but the bear's still there. Oh no! The family get into the house, through the front door, which they forget to close, so they have to go back and close it, just as the bear is coming up the path. Oh my! "Back upstairs. Into the bedroom. Into bed. Under the covers."
Opening 16
"We're not going on a bear hunt again." A big pink eiderdown covers them all, even the dog. The baby seems quite happy, holding his bear, perhaps he wasn't so frightened after all.
Don't forget to turn the page and show the back endpapers ...
Back endpapers
It's the beach we saw earlier, the sun is going down, but the dark snow storm clouds are still visible. The bear is walking away from us, back to his cave - back into the story. Ask the children how they think he feels.
Caroline highlights the children's joy in joining in with the repetition as she tells the story and their "smiles, laughter and surprise. And of course 'Again!'" Oh yes! "Again!" All children chorus this as you close the book. I haven't come across a pre-school group who haven't wanted this wonderful picturebook again, and again, and again! Caroline says she encourages the children to act out the story, which is an excellent way of supporting their memory of the sequence followed in the narrative.
A collection of activities can be found here, including this link to Michael Rosen telling the story on Youtube. Well worth watching. He's such a great performer, and it'll give you ideas for how to use the story for a storytelling session!
A big thanks to Caroline for recommending this classic. BRILLIANT!
